Cough, Cough, Coughing All The Way – Tis the Season for Chicken Soup for the Sandwich Generation!

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Hush! Do you hear it? Is it the sound of carols playing softly in the background? Not at the moment. How about snow falling quietly. Nope. Jingle bells. Fraid not. It’s actually the sound of me – coughing and sneezing the night away! Oyyyy. Not great timing to have a cold during the holiday season, and even worse for those of us in the Sandwich Generation! Who’s got time to be sick when you are busy juggling all the multigenerational issues of caring for elderly parents and babysitting grandchildren! And try as we might, you know SOME of those germs will spread. After all,  how did we usually get sick? Tho this time, it’s either a cold with a REALLY LONG incubation period, or I got it from outside our family. Sigh….

I really should make chicken soup. It definitely has good healing properties! But I’m out of chicken and don’t want to go to the store. So I’m making do with chicken broth, TV dinners and tacos. 🙂 But when I’m ready to, I’m going to have to try this free recipe from Gooseberry Patch Homemade Christmas. In addition to plenty of scrumptious recipes, including their Chill Chaser Chicken Soup, they also have more of their cute, and often easy crafts that are as fun for us seniors as our grand kids. 🙂

I’m also checking the web periodically to see if anyone has finally come up with the cure for the common cold. Not so far, though. I was happy to see that Weather.com is reporting minimal invasions of the flu – hate to combine the two, don’t you?

From there, I headed to AARP where I discovered they have a handy dandy symptom checker among many other useful health tools. It told me I have, drum roll please, a COLD. Hmmm. I guess I was hoping for something medicine could wipe out in a second. No such luck. But they did remind me to take yogurt and eat chicken soup, among several other great tips. 🙂

WebMD has a nice slide-show with excellent reminders of what to do when you have a cold, including a sweet baby boomer family memory for me – Vicks VapoRub – they suggest dabbing a bit under your nose to clear up the nasal passages. I’ll have to ask my mom if she has some. I remember her using that every time I was sick when I was a kid. How about your parents? Come to think of it, my favorite tissue – Puffs Plus – has a Vicks version. I’ll have to remember to stock up on those for future bugs! How about you?

Ah well, while colds and flu aren’t great news for all of us boomers and seniors they do happen. For the most part, I’ll just keep plugging away since all my duties do give me the freedom to just sit quietly a lot if necessary. My poor senior mom, who IS healthy (and I’m praying hard she stays that way) is now taking her walks alone. My grandkids – that’s a story for another day (tomorrow, to be exact). And in the meantime, I’m hiding away to keep from sharing TOO many germs for one day anyway. And very grateful I can write this for you without giving you ANY germs at all. Got any advice for me? I’m all ears. And I’m hoping you and your Sandwich Generation family are NOT sharing this particular seasonal issue!

P.S. Would you believe it, the Chicken Soup for the Soul series even has a Chicken Soup recipes book, complete with stories for caregivers and grandparents, and recipes. Fun reading for those of us in the Sandwich Generation who are recouping together. 🙂